Students at Nature Coast Technical High School got a brief break from classes, but it came with a strong lesson on avoiding danger.

Multiple agencies came together to perform Prom Promise, an effort to show high schoolers the dangers of drinking and driving on prom night.

The old films don’t seem to work anymore, so the students sat in the stands at the football field and watched as three drama students from the school played “crash victims” and were treated by emergency personnel.

Ambulances, police cars, three wrecked vehicles from a junkyard, sheriff’s office and rescue personnel, a Medi-Trans helicopter and even a hearse gave the whole event a realistic touch. 

The prom was set for Saturday, March 25, said Tori-Ann Noyes, the principal.

“We want to make sure that all of our kids are safe, and we will do whatever we need to do to make sure they will be aware of what will happen,” she said.

The students, Annette Hager, Robert Kordon and Eden Sugg, who were performing, got parental permission, Noyes said, and the surrounding schools were advised of the event so the sight of emergency vehicles at Nature Coast didn’t cause anyone to become worried that it was a real emergency.

Emergency personnel pretended to treat an injured teenager, then simulated loading him into the helicopter. 

“We’re hoping this will save lives,” Noyes said, raising her voice to be heard as the helicopter took off and flew away.

A few minutes later, a hearse from a local funeral home pulled onto the football field. Emergency workers prepared a “victim” to be taken away in the car.

Meanwhile, a narrator described how the girl’s parents were going to be informed that their child had died in a crash.

The students were asked to raise their right hands and swear they wouldn’t drink and drive, whether they were going to the prom or elsewhere. All of them made the promise.

An expert makeup job made Sugg, 17, one of the accident performers, look like a very badly injured teenager, but she was smiling as she joined two other members of the drama club for a photo and took a bow for the crowd.

When she was a child, Eden said, she had been in a car that had been in an accident and had been very confused about what happened.

“Not only is this encouraging me to get my license, that way I can be that safe driver you see on the road,” she said.

The lesson over, the students were sent back to class and, gradually, the emergency vehicles and personnel went back to their respective stations.

Capt. Marcus Zopf, of Hernando County Fire-Rescue, said the mission is to get kids to not drink and drive.

“I think it’s a good thing,” he said of the event. “That’s our intent, hopefully to open their eyes to where they’re conscious of not drinking and driving. That’s the mission here, to stop that.”